(dramatic music and gunfire)
- [Narrator] May 5, 1865, the colonies' most wanted man,
bushranger, Ben Hall, is surrounded by heavily armed
police on the outskirts of Forbes, New South Wales.
Within minutes he'll be dead.
But, the final moments of Hall's life
are shrouded in mystery.
Was Ben Hall a dangerous criminal,
lawfully killed while trying to escape?
Or as legend tells, did the police
shoot Hall as he lay sleeping,
an act tantamount to cold blooded murder?
(upbeat music)
- Our nation's history is etched with bushranger tales,
stories of rebels and outlaws and those
who fought against them.
I'm a descendant of bushrangers and I really
want to know just how true these epic tales really are.
So come with me and a team of experts
as we unearth the truth behind Australia's
most infamous lawless legends.
(dramatic music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ You kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ T'was you who loosed the darts of war ♪
♪ Setting flame I'll keep ♪
♪ Hide behind that policeman's badge ♪
♪ And grip your judge's hand ♪
♪ I'll hunt you down and cut you up ♪
♪ We'll see whose judgment stands. ♪
- Before Ned Kelly there was Ben Hall, the young
charismatic rock star of Australian bushrangers.
Some say he was responsible for between 100
and 600 holdups.
His legend tells of a young man driven to crime.
Others say he simply made bad choices.
After three years of the most prolific
crime spree in Australian colonial history,
Ben Hall's bushranging career comes to an end
at a place called Billabong Creek near Forbes,
in central New South Wales.
He is 27 years old.
(gentle music)
This farm paddock looks like all the others around it.
This particular one is a very special piece of land.
For years this spot has been known
as where Ben Hall died in a hail of bullets
and this is the official kill site.
It's right here where we're going to start
our quest to find out what really happened.
The story goes that on the 5th of May, 1865,
Ben Hall is on the run with a price
on his head of 1000 pounds.
Acting on a tipoff, a police party
led by Sub Inspector, James Davidson,
is directed straight to Ben Hall's camp.
By early morning they have him surrounded.
Davidson says that Hall is armed and dangerous
and he calls out for Hall to surrender,
but the bushranger turns and runs.
Hall doesn't realize it, but he's actually
running towards another group of Davidson's men
who were lying in wait.
(guns firing)
By the end of the gunfire Hall's body
is riddled with bullets.
The police fire around 30 shots.
Davidson later claims they all hit their mark.
But there's another version of this story
fueled by myth and mystery.
That the police tracker, Billy Dargin, shot Ben Hall
in the middle of the night while he slept.
(gun firing)
And the police sprayed Hall's body with bullets
to make it look like he was trying to escape.
(guns firing)
So, what really happened?
How exactly was Ben Hall killed?
And was it a lawful shooting
or a ruthless police coverup?
The Lawless Team is here to begin searching for answers.
Historian, Dr. Kiera Lindsey is an author
and scholar of Australian Colonial history.
Professor Roger Byard is one of the country's
leading forensic pathologists.
Archeologist, Adam Ford, has led major excavations
around the world.
This site has never had a full scientific
investigation until now.
The team's mission begins with taking
a close look into the official police account
of Ben Hall's death.
Adam, where do you think we should start?
- Well, we start with the primary source evidence
and you can't get better than this document here
which is a map that was drawn by Sub Inspector
Davidson almost immediately after the ambush
and the death of Ben Hall.
And it describes in incredible detail
the locations and the movements of these police
contingent and the movements of Ben Hall
in his last hours.
- And, we've got the official police report
that Sub Inspector Davidson wrote on the 12th of May,
a week later, and it's quite different actually
from the inquest reports that we've also got,
where Davidson gave evidence.
Now these stories, there's some discrepancies in them,
so that's really interesting to sort of try
and make sense of where and why the stories
are different in key bits of evidence.
- The other thing we've got that's really important is
we've got the testimony of Dr. Assenheim.
He was the doctor who examined Ben very soon
after his death and gave evidence and talked
about the wounds.
And one of the surprising things about it is
that it's quite a scanty report.
There's not much detail in it, but what we can do is
we can take what is given us and then we can
interrogate it based on the other documents we have
and this wonderful map.
- The thing that worries me is that there are two
distinct versions of Ben Hall's death.
There were no independent witnesses.
It's all from the police side.
How can we trust them?
- Well, I think that's the point, isn't it?
- All we know is, Hall was killed by the police
on the 5th of May in 1865 and what we've gotta do
is find out what happened leading up to
and during that event.
- We have to take what they have said and we have
to just dissect it and compare it to what we know.
- [Narrator] The Police had been closing in on Hall
for weeks before the attack.
Rupert Ward is the descendant of the senior police officer
who led the hunt for Ben Hall.
- James Davidson was your great grandfather.
- Yes.
- What sort of a man was he?
- From my impression he was a hard working person,
a responsible person with a desire to do well.
We've always known about Ben Hall and the fact
that he shot him.
There was a general impression that it was best
not to talk about it.
He wasn't proud of that shooting.
It's not something that he promoted himself over.
My grandfather's researching the family history
which involved James Henry Davidson.
My grandmother told him don't look too closely.
You might not like what you find out.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] The first step in investigating how Hall
was killed is to determine where it actually happened.
- So, like these saplings, that's the official
shooting site of Ben Hall.
But the first thing I want to do is try and prove
whether it really is the place where Ben Hall died.
- Even though there's a plaque to him
and information about his death right there.
- I know, but you look at Davidson's map.
There's a couple of things that don't add up.
One, there's the site there and that tree line
over there, that's the Billabong Creek.
It's just too far away to fit with what's
on the Davidson map.
And the second thing is, the creek turns
to the north there in front of us.
According to the map the creek is relatively east/west,
running along like that, so it just doesn't feel right.
But, what we can look at is this.
See it's got a hut here, Strickland's Hut.
See, I think the real kill site is out there somewhere.
- But because of Strickland Hut
and the northern running river.
- Absolutely, but the crucial thing is we need
to find that hut.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Just a few years before Ben Hall's death
this region of New South Wales is transformed.
- [Kiera] In 1861 gold is discovered in the Lachlan region
and it is explosive and exciting.
This whole world kinda goes from black and white
to color and drama as migrants flood in here
and gold starts to be pulled out of the soil
and a world of temptation and possibility
suddenly presents itself right under the nose
of the simple native born man.
- [Narrator] Gold disrupts life in the region
already caught in the grip of tensions
between British immigrants and the convict class.
- [Kiera] One of the things that I think is most important
to understand about Ben Hall is that he was
a native born, and that means he was part
of the first generation of Europeans to be born
in the colony and on top of that, Ben Hall was also
the son of two convicts.
- [Narrator] Ben Hall was brushed with the convict stain,
yet against the odds he becomes a respectable
landowner with a bright future.
- [Kiera] He had the reputation for being polite
and popular, well meaning.
People really liked Ben as a young man.
It's often said that Hall was the kind of man
who was pushed to become an outlaw,
to live a life of crime, that he wouldn't
have done it naturally, that there was this
sort of perfect storm.
(gentle music)
His wife, Betty Walsh, had run away with another man
and taken their son, Henry, and that this
absolutely devastated Hall.
And right on the heels of that Hall was arrested
and did four weeks in jail for a robbery
he claimed he was not involved in and for which
he was never convicted.
He came back from jail to find
that all his cattle were dead.
He's lost his wife, he's lost his income,
his opportunity for independent wealth
and the dignity that comes with that
and all that that represented for him
as a native born man.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] The legend of Hall is kept alive
by his great nephew, Peter Bradley.
- Cup of tea already?
- Cup of tea already.
- [Narrator] But for generations it was hidden
as a family secret.
- According to my mother, there was no bushrangers
in our family and even though we grew up
not far from the place where Ben Hall was killed
and I only found out after she passed away,
probably nine or 10 years ago, from my cousin.
- Is that right?
- Yeah, I think people of that generation,
convict ancestry, bushranger ancestry,
that was something to be just forgotten about.
- So, what do you make of the police actions on the day?
Were they lawful?
- For them to just open fire and shoot like that
was really quite cowardly.
Heavily armed, eight to one.
- So, would you go as far as saying
that Ben Hall was murdered?
- I would think that certainly a charge of murder
or at the very least, manslaughter.
- [Narrator] To find the location where Ben Hall was killed
Adam is searching for evidence of the Strickland Hut
marked on Sub Inspector Davidson's map.
It's a crucial reference point.
Incredibly, he starts finding clues lying under our feet.
- Look at this.
You see this?
That's ceramic, you see it's got little band on it.
This is really interesting 'cause this means
that it's not just an agricultural site.
This is a domestic site, this is pottery.
See the willow pattern?
- Yeah, yeah.
- See this brick?
This is really exciting.
- There was obviously a brick home.
- It would have been really basic back at this time.
It would have perhaps been two rooms,
timber walls, shingle roof, even just
a beaten earth floor rather than floor boards.
- [Narrator] After a day of investigating
Adam and his team have discovered more artifacts
dating back to the mid 1800s.
- So, there's maybe a perfume bottle
or a medicine bottle or something.
The artifacts are dated to the right time.
It's a domestic house and it's in the right location.
I'm pretty confident saying that we've got the hut
that is marked on the Davidson map.
This is the Strickland Hut.
I've got a blowup of one of our aerials of the site.
So, this is Billabong Creek, just over there
and here is where we're standing, which is where
we've discovered the site, the Strickland Hut.
Watch what happens when I overlay this transparency
of Davidson's plan.
So let's line it up to what the places we know
which is the Billabong Creek.
So, Davidson's creek, the actual creek here
and Strickland Hut is here, so that's there.
So these two permanent features line up.
What doesn't line up is the official kill site
which is there because Davidson said Hall died here.
That's almost 700 meters to the west.
- Right, so are you saying the official kill site
could be wrong?
- I am.
I may be stickin' my neck out until we prove it.
But I'm pretty confident from this evidence
that it's wrong.
- [Narrator] If Adam is right a new shooting site
could hold fresh clues into how Ben Hall was killed,
but with the site buried under a field of lupin
the search for evidence is not going to be easy.
- The violent death of bushranger, Ben Hall,
has been shrouded in controversy for over 150 years.
There are the police accounts which claim
Hall was shot while trying to escape.
And both accounts differ as to whether he was even armed.
And then there's the bush legend which says
that Hall was executed by a police tracker
while he slept.
Well, our team of experts is trying to discover
what actually occurred and starting with where it happened.
(upbeat music)
Adam believes that Ben Hall was killed somewhere
around here, 700 meters west of the official shooting site.
But if there's any evidence to be found
it's buried under this field of lupin.
Fortunately, the farmer has agreed to gear a large section
so the team can begin hunting.
- This is a CTX 3030, it's a mine lab metal detector
and it's different from the normal metal detectors
that just go beep and that's all you know,
there's a piece of metal there.
This can discriminate between different types of metal.
It's got these number ranges.
The low range is non ferrous alloys
and the higher range is the ferrous alloys
and of course, we're not interested in anything iron.
What we're after are the bullets, the projectiles
that came out of these guns and they're made of lead.
- [Narrator] As Adam's team is trying to find
where and how Ben Hall died Kiera is looking
to how Hall became such a legend
while he was alive.
- When it came to the authorities he was very cheeky,
very brazen, wasn't he?
- He was so brazen.
- He was making fun of them, wasn't he?
- Absolutely.
- Running rings around the local cops, wasn't he?
- That was one of the reasons that they
were so popular, this gang, because the Lachlan people
didn't really like the police who had only
just come into the region anyway and they thought
that these police were interlopers
and they considered them fools.
They didn't know the land,
they didn't know how to ride horses.
They'd come with all their toffee heirs
and English superiority so the people
around Lachlan thought it was great locks
that Ben Hall was making fun of the police.
Ben Hall is said to have committed
something between 100 and 600 acts of robbery
during his career as a bushranger,
including what's said to be the largest
gold heist in colonial history,
the Eugowra Gold Escort robbery.
While the charges against Hall never stuck
and most of the gold was reclaimed
he basically got away with it and became a hero
for the native born people.
- So slowly, but surely there was great animosity
and I suppose a sense of revenge building in the police.
- I think so, absolutely.
- [Narrator] So, could revenge have driven
the police to kill Ben Hall?
The story that Hall was shot in his sleep
and a victim of a police coverup is chronicled
in a famous song called The Streets of Forbes.
- So this is what it says.
Bill Dargin he was chosen to shoot the outlaw dead.
The troopers fired madly and filled him full of lead.
They threw him on a horse
and strapped him like a swag.
And then they led him through the streets of Forbes
to show the prize they had.
- Roger, you looked at the report on the words.
Could they be consistent with him being
shot in his sleep?
- I think absolutely.
It's possible that Billy Dargin crept up
very carefully, shot him.
Are there two bullet wounds in the head?
Yes there are.
Then, the other police came out, the shooting
had been done, and finished him off.
I think from the wounds, that is a possible scenario.
- How could he trust the other seven members
of the posse to hold their tongue?
- The reward money was pretty substantial
and very tempting and remember that their reputation
has been absolutely dashed by Ben Hall.
He has humiliated them again and again and again.
- These likely to be men that are going
to be bought like that.
I don't know.
I mean, it's certainly tempting, but you know,
the more complicated the story is, if it's not true,
the more likely it is that somebody's gonna fall off
or turn evidence against them and it didn't happen.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] New evidence will help determine
if the official police account, or if the Dargin story
is more likely to be true.
The search for bullets has been underway now for two days,
so is Adam still confident he's looking in the right spot?
How's it going?
- Well, it's going good in one way.
I mean, we're finding lots of stuff.
But in another way it's not the stuff we're after.
A lotta these flags, they indicate ferrous metal,
which is kind of iron based and iron sparks,
so you don't get any iron to do with ballistics
or to do with guns other than the actual weapons themselves.
So, it's not what we're after.
Although, I did find one thing that got my heart racing.
I'll show you.
This little item here.
We found it earlier today.
Feel that, feel the weight of that?
- Yeah, to a ignoramus like me it looks
like a little rock, but you're right it is heavier.
- It's lead, it's lead.
And these projectiles that we're looking for are lead.
But unfortunately, you see the green on it?
It's got a copper casing or a copper coating,
so it is a bullet and it's big one,
which also indicates old, but with a copper casing on it,
it's 25 years too late for us.
So, it's a bit crushing.
Lift me up, brought me back down again.
- You do seem a little nervous about it.
- I am nervous really 'cause we've opened
this paddock up and we haven't found anything yet
that we can relate to the death of Ben Hall.
- And of course, your whole reputation's at stake.
- Yeah, I don't have much of that left anyway,
so that's okay.
- That's not true.
So on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you?
- First thing this morning would have been eight.
Now about a five.
- Okay, so we're still 50/50.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] While physical evidence remains elusive
Roger and Kiera are uncovering clues
in the historical records that raise doubt
about the police version of the event.
- [Kiera] There's all those reports about his body
being laid out and hundreds of people going in to see
and the disgust they felt when they saw his
perforated body and you know, the shots through his head,
his legs shredded.
- [Narrator] But the official medical report
tells a very different story.
- I've been looking at Dr. Assenheim's statement
which was prepared after he had examined
Ben's body the day after the shooting
and there's only four lines really,
talking about the findings.
I've examined the body of the deceased, that's Ben.
I find it perforated by several bullets.
Now, what he's talking about is two shots here,
the two to the head.
Then we have a shot in the back.
That's your shotgun wound.
Then we have this through and through shot
in the left flank and it comes out on the right side.
What concerns me is on Sub Inspector Davidson's
admission there were 30 rounds fired.
So, why have we only got four wounds described
in the medical report?
- So, what are you thinking?
- Well, I think that Dr. Assenheim was actually
downplayed the number of shots.
Or, is this damage control?
Is the doctor trying to protect the police
that he would be working with?
I think those things are quite possible.
- In the inquest on the day after Sub Inspector
Davidson says that when he sees Hall walking out
at first light he sees him with just a bridle
in his hand, but a week later he says this.
We saw a man who we instantly recognized as Hall
moving out of a scrub with a bridle and a revolver.
As he ran towards the saplings he clutched it and he
aimed his revolver at the five policemen
who were shooting at him.
So, he's put a gun in Ben Hall's hand a week later.
- Why would you do that?
- [Narrator] There is one crucial clue to verifying
if the police account is likely to be true.
Roger has traced what may be the only piece
of physical evidence from the event so far,
an old belt, supposedly worn by Ben Hall
when he died.
- Okay, Damian, what do we know about this belt?
- As long as this museum's had the belt,
and it came into the collection in 1958,
it's always been known as Ben Hall's belt.
Certainly, as you'll see from the descriptions
it looks like the type of belt from that era
and it certainly looks like an ammunition belt.
We've never been able to prove definitively
that it's Ben Hall's belt.
- [Roger] I've seen the photographs of this.
It doesn't look like a bullet hole to me.
- [Damian] It's always been in two halves,
but let's put the belt back together
as it would've been.
- Magic, look at that.
That's extraordinary.
- [Damian] Why?
- Well, we've got a bullet hole
which I thought wasn't there.
I mean, we've got this oval defect
which is what we get when a bullet
comes at an angle, not directly at you.
- [Narrator] Roger's research into the medical records
of Hall's dead body describes a bullet wound
right through his left side
and according to police records
that same shot took off Hall's gun belt.
- Be interesting to measure how far that is
from the front on Damian maybe where it lies.
- Want me to take my belt off?
- If you insist yes.
- That's the distance.
So, if we use you as a guinea pig and put the front there
and we bring that around to the side,
that's where that went in.
Police describe that through and through shot
near the kidneys.
It's actually coming in from the back and the side,
so it's coming in at an angle and if you remember
the description there were two policemen,
three people shooting behind him
and there were five people that come out
in about that position.
- So, what will you do now?
- What we can do is, we'll do some scientific testing
to try to add weight to the evidence
that this may be Ben Hall's belt.
We can't test for DNA because the fluids,
the blood have gone, it's 150 years ago.
But, what we can do is to actually take
a piece of the actual belt and submit that for analysis.
We can look around the edge and sample that
and see if we can see lead
because as a bullet goes through
leather or skin it wipes itself, so you can get soot
and with the old lead bullets we may get a lead residue.
- I find it a difficult thing to suggest
because it's causing damage even though it's minor,
but I think it'll give us a very interesting answer.
- [Narrator] Can modern science determine
if the museum belt was shot off by a ball of lead
and will it help reveal if the police version
of Ben Hall's death is true or if he was
shot in his sleep.
(guns firing)
- There have always been conflicting accounts
surrounding Ben Hall's death.
The police version says the bushranger was armed
when they gunned him down in a blaze
of overwhelming fire power.
Others claim that the police executed Hall
while he was asleep.
So, is Hall's death a case of police brutality
at its worst or were the police just protecting themselves
against an armed and dangerous criminal?
Well, there's new evidence that may reveal
if the police version is right.
- [Narrator] Roger collected samples from a museum's
gun belt believed to have been worn by Ben Hall
when he was gunned down.
The samples have been analyzed at the Victoria
Police Forensic Lab using a powerful
electron scanning microscope and the results are ready.
So, will there be any trace of lead on the belt
from an event over 150 years ago?
- We can magnify things to 10,000 times their
original size and do an elemental analysis
at the same time.
- If you find lead I'll fall over backwards.
- What we're looking at here is the piece
that has been taken from the belt itself.
- [Roger] So, this is the edge of the bullet's hole.
- [Kylie] It is, it is, yes.
And what we're looking at here are the fibers.
When we zoom in and have a look at these
small little particles, so we've sort of got
little bright areas that are within the fibers themselves.
If we click on a particle here.
So, as you can see with this one, this is coming up
positive for lead.
- Huh, fancy that.
- So, these particles of course, you know can be
associated with firearms, ammunition.
- What it means is it may just be a gun belt,
but isn't that interesting?
- [Kylie] We also found some brass as well,
which could be associated with the cartridge cases
used at the time and we've also found
some interesting particles that also contain mercury.
- [Roger] So, this fits this 19th century ammunition.
So, it's worked.
- It has, yes.
- Well, I would've bet my mortgage that that
wouldn't have worked, but how extraordinary.
- [Narrator] The lead residue on the belt means
that it is possible it was shot off.
The police account of Ben Hall's killing
may have some credibility.
(upbeat music)
Sub Inspector Davidson's accounts detail a clear
and determined plan to get Hall, but why?
Kiera has investigated another side
to the Ben Hall legend.
- There was a much darker side, wasn't there?
- Yeah, there was.
So, this idea of the romantic rogue is not the whole story
and I think it's often cut out of the story.
He robbed the poor, so not just a Robin Hood.
He stole from bullet drivers and he also stole
from the most persecuted group in colonial society
at this time, the Chinese gold miners.
He also robbed women at gunpoint.
So, this is not so chivalrous.
It's not the gentleman of the rogue image.
- [Narrator] And part of a group that were police killers.
- [Kiera] There were at least two murders of policemen
during this time.
- [Narrator] So, what was Hall's involvement
in those murders?
- I don't think we can say definitively, but what we
do know is that he was a member of the gang,
possibly the leader of the gang, so therefore,
even if he didn't pull the trigger
he had blood on his hands.
It's after this time that they have the outlaw reward
put on their heads.
In that Hall is cited as wanted for willful murder.
- It's easy to look back now and think
how romantic it is, but it's not romantic
when a bunch of thugs come up and treason
whole families or individuals.
It had to be stopped really, just like
it would have to be stopped now.
- [Narrator] The police account of the killing
of Ben Hall by Sub Inspector Davidson and his men
is explicit, with detailed descriptions
of every shot fired.
Roger wants to better understand the power
of the weapons and the damage each caused
to Hall's body.
- One of the things we've gotta be aware of is
that this is not Billabong Creek in 1865.
All we're doing is trying to reconstruct
some of the events and to understand them better.
We're not trying to make exactly what happened there.
We don't have all that much information.
But, we've got the torso here
that's made of ballistic gelatin.
So, we're using this to represent
the back of Ben and as we know
from Sub Inspector Davidson's testimony
that he and Billy Dargin both shot
at him with a double barrel shotguns.
Using this very strange elite cartridge
that Ben's got here.
- So, this was a convenient little bundle.
The pellets all stayed together so that when the gun
was leveled the pellets didn't all roll out the end.
- Sure, so it's a pretty lethal bundle.
- Yeah, very, absolutely.
- You're serious when you fire that at someone.
- [Narrator] When the gun is fired the wire cage
and lead balls separate into a swarm
of lethal projectiles.
- I saw six or seven impacts.
Look at this, the cage is caught in the shoulder
with two balls still inside of it.
- In the back.
- And one's come out right here.
- And the cage so you can actually feel
it under the skin there.
- So, what we have here is we've got two entries
on either side of the chest.
There's one that's going into the right lung
and that would cause fair amount of damage
to the lung, but it's away from the heart
and the aorta, the big vessel in the middle.
And there's an entry here that would do the same thing
to the left lung.
Of course, if those pellets had actually
gone through ribs it would take bone with them,
so that would magnify the damage that it could cause here.
If you shoot somebody who's running away from you
in the back with a shotgun, you're not really
expecting them to do well.
- [Narrator] Davidson said that after he fired
Ben Hall jumped, turned around, but kept running.
Then Sargent James Condle testified he fired next
and hit Hall between the shoulders.
He was using a .56 caliber rifle.
(upbeat music)
- Whoa, look at that.
- Yep, right shoulder indeed.
- Yep.
- That is a brilliant shot.
It's interesting looking at the track
compared to the pellets.
It's very impressive.
That would cause some damage.
- Yeah, it's one thing to look at it from the back here,
but if you actually come to the side and have a look
and you can actually see the bullet tracks
traveling the full thickness of the torso there.
- That is spectacular.
He was like a sieve.
So what we've got with .56 is it is a much bigger tract.
It's coming in at the back of the right shoulder
and it's coming out at the front.
In this position it would have taken out
the subclavian vessels so those are
the big blood vessels going to the arm.
So, you would need urgent medical care.
- [Narrator] According to Davidson's police report
a third shot was fired from Billy Dargin's shotgun.
Hall stumbled and still kept running.
- So, Ben Hall has now been shot three times,
twice by shotguns and once by a large caliber .56.
- That's correct.
- Could the police, do you think, have now
taken him alive?
- I think if he just had these wounds
certainly he might have survived.
So yes, if they had stopped firing
perhaps they could have taken him alive.
(upbeat music)
- How's it going?
- Not great actually, mate.
Now we're clean towards the end of the detection
and the cleared area, the area that I thought
was where Davidson indicated where Ben Hall fought
and we have no physical evidence of that.
Because it's underground, because it's hidden,
you never quite know what you're gonna find.
I mean, it's part of the thrill of it I guess.
I mean, you have to just, you have
to take these disappointments.
- Yeah.
- We try and minimize them.
- It's frustrating, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating.
I am almost 100% sure that the official site
was never part of the incident.
Ben Hall didn't die there.
I'm pretty sure about that.
But, where he died, somewhere in this paddock.
It could be just a meter beyond
where we've cleared.
It's just so tantalizing, so frustrating.
It's just very, very disappointing.
- Well, I won't hug you.
- No.
- I won't throw my arms around you.
- No, don't.
- You might start to cry.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] But the hunt for answers
is far from over.
Kiera is meeting with Judge Greg Woods,
an expert in legal history.
- Let's go back to the Jubilee Room, shall we?
- Thank you.
- [Narrator] To understand the extreme measures
the government took to stop Ben Hall.
- It's the 1865 Felons Apprehension Act
and it came into law on the 8th of April 1865
and it allowed the person who was declared
to be an outlaw to be shot on sight
by anybody, policeman or any colonist.
It was a radical change in the law.
- You're saying that this new piece of legislation
would allow anyone, not just a policeman,
but any man, woman or child to gun down
those who had been declared an outlaw.
- Well, that's absolutely right.
- Wow, by anyone at any time.
- By anyone at any time,
provided that the formalities had been complied with.
- Your great grandfather led five
other policemen and two trackers.
Do you think they were out to capture
Ben Hall or kill him?
- I would think that shooting him
would've been a possibility
at the very least, wouldn't it?
I don't think it was a murderous attack,
you know, a planned execution.
I would imagine that ideally, if they
could have taken him prisoner,
- Taken him alive?
- Taken him alive, that's what they
would have preferred to do.
But, that's not what happened, is it?
- [Narrator] It sounds as if they've lost control.
- It's gotta be remembered that these characters
were not particularly highly trained like police are today.
The issue was to get Ben Hall, shoot him straight away.
There would have been a lot of blood lust there.
They were sorta nervous.
They were excitable.
They would have been perhaps extremely tense
and they're shooting someone, and they're
allowed to do it apparently, and they just keep firing.
(gun firing)
- [Narrator] There is one final piece of the puzzle,
what may be the only physical evidence
from the shooting of Ben Hall,
the museum gun belt.
The lead residue analysis on the belt
revealed that it could have been shot off.
Now Roger's preparing to shoot a replica belt
with an antique gun to see if the shape
of the bullet hole is a match.
If it is, it could add support
to the police version of the event.
(dramatic music)
- This is really interesting.
The belt didn't fall off.
Does that surprise me?
No it doesn't.
I think that would be too much to hope for.
The belt's made of different leather.
Who knows what condition this was in?
This one's a little wider and maybe a little thicker.
The important point to me is we've got
this oval hole and it's sloped
on that side and that's exactly
what this one does.
And that tells us where the shooter was standing.
(gun firing)
- [Roger] That's a significant shot
because it's going near the kidney.
It's going near all the vessels that go to the kidney.
You've got big veins, the inferior vena cava,
you have the aorta, the stomach.
It's gonna make a mess.
It may have even gone into the liver.
- [Narrator] So, could that have been the kill shot?
- [Roger] Yeah, that's a lethal shot.
- [Narrator] Our evidence from the belt testing
does support the official police version
of the killing and the key wounds
documented in the medical report.
- [Roger] It's just overkill really.
He's had so many shots put into him.
The gelatin actually is a bit of a problem
because it does hold its shape very well.
If this was actually flesh and bone
it would be ripped, torn.
He may have even been dead
when he hit the ground in the saplings.
And so, they emptied their guns
when he was already dead.
But I mean, this was an execution.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] It was a brutal death, but according
to the law of that time it was legal.
But, what if there was evidence
to suggest that in fact, it was not legal?
(dramatic music)
After three years of robberies and raids
police finally close in on the notorious
bushranger, Ben Hall.
He's ambushed and killed at a time
when the law apparently allowed any person
to shoot him on sight.
But were the police actually within their rights
to shoot him at all?
- According to the Wednesday, 10 May
Government Gazette in 1865, it's clear
that Hall was not an outlaw because the formalities
of the process required under the Felons Apprehension Act,
had not been completed.
The law required a further step,
proclamation published in the Government Gazette
and that simply hadn't happened by the 5th of May.
- Ben Hall hadn't been legally declared an outlaw.
- Then Davidson would not have had
the protection of the Act.
- So, what do you think about the way
the police emptied their guns into him
in those final moments as he was dying?
- He's not fleeing anymore.
The police were not allowed to shoot him
and if in fact, he was killed by those shots
that occurred after he was fallen to the ground,
then that was murder.
- Hmmm, that's very powerful.
(gentle music)
When Ben Hall died it came to signal
the end of bushranging in New South Wales.
The tide had turned.
The law now had the upper hand
and it was no longer going to be a fun business,
being a bushranger, under the new terms.
And what that meant in broader terms
for society is that law had won over lawlessness.
- [Narrator] The legacy of Ben Hall's death
continues to resonate today.
And now, for the first time descendants
from both sides of the story are coming together
to learn what the Lawless Team has uncovered.
- Hey Peter.
- Hello, Mike.
- Good to see you again, man.
- Good to see you.
- Yeah, yeah, gonna be a very interesting day today.
- Gonna be a wonderful day,
but there's rather a lot of flies.
- There are, I've already swallowed two of them.
(laughing)
- Hey Rupert.
- Goodday.
How are you mate?
- I'm good, how are you?
- Good, thank you.
- Rupert Ward, Peter Bradley.
Peter is the great great nephew of Ben Hall
and Rupert is the great grandson
of Sub Inspector Davidson who led
the charge against your great great uncle.
- Wonderful to meet you.
You know, I've never met anyone from that side at all.
- No, well I haven't either.
- And you've never been out here?
- Never seen it, so it's a real moment.
- Wonderful, thank you.
- [Narrator] It's time for the descendants
to meet the Lawless Team.
These are our headquarters here, gentlemen,
in the tent.
- Hi guys, how are you.
- This is our descendants.
- [Narrator] Their mission began with a key question.
How was Ben Hall killed?
It's great having you all here.
You've been digging, you've been analyzing,
you've been researching.
What are your conclusions?
- This official site is not the site
where Ben Hall was killed.
Unfortunately, we didn't find this.
I am still convinced that somewhere
underneath that drying lupin is
the physical evidence of this event.
I just think that maybe we just
chose the wrong spot.
But, that's archeology.
- There are things in this case
that make us think that there were times
when the lawful men slip over the line
and behave in a way that's lawless.
- And this brings us to the whole issue
of was this overkill?
And I think if you look at Sub Inspector Davidson's
letter to his father, he says he lost control of his men
and these are frightened men.
Hall and his gang were very dangerous.
They killed policemen,
actually they hated them.
I think there's a lot of emotion involved here.
And I think that that really explained what happened.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The story that tracker, Billy Dargin,
shot Ben Hall in his sleep is the least likely version
of how Ben Hall died.
It remains folklore.
The evidence supports the official police account.
Ben Hall was ambushed by Sub Inspector Davidson's
police party and tried to escape.
Whether Davidson called on Hall to surrender,
or if Hall was holding a gun, is unknown.
According to Davidson, he, Sargent James Condle
and Billy Dargin fired the first shots.
Our testing showed the wounds match his medical report.
Ben Hall went into the path
of five more of his men, all firing.
Our evidence supports the police testimony
that Hall was shot in the side
through his gun belt.
According to Davidson, his men emptied their guns
into Hall's body.
Those final actions were beyond the law.
- It's got execution written all over it.
That's how it sounds.
And it is overkill.
- These men could've been charged with murder
for what they did.
I think this is very sobering.
- If he hadn't been stopped there would have been
more victims and many of the victims of Ben Hall
were drovers, farm workers, bar, people who worked
in pubs and bars.
He was no Robin Hood.
- No one's ever said he's Robin Hood.
You could almost say he deserved to be stopped,
perhaps not in that fashion.
(gentle music)
That's closure for us to have the confirmation
that the police version of events was
almost undoubtedly the correct version.
To have that resolved is particularly rewarding.
- I certainly can express a sentiment of regret
at the loss that your family suffered
and I can see how what happened
to my great grandfather must have been
a defining moment in his life
and probably shaped the rest of his life.
- There will always be questions about what happened
on that bitterly cold morning when Ben Hall was killed.
But what we do know now is that this was the moment
when the line between the lawful and the lawless
became profoundly blurred.
The killing of Ben Hall was the beginning of the end
of the bushranging era in New South Wales,
but it certainly wasn't the end of lawlessness.
It was just one bloody step in our nation's journey
to strive for law and order.
(dramatic music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ You killed me in my sleep ♪
♪ Hide behind that policeman's badge ♪
♪ And grip your judge's hand ♪
♪ I'll hunt you down and cut you up ♪
♪ We'll see who's judgment stands ♪